Central to success in any game with an appreciable amount of luck is having a strategy for mitigating the role that luck plays. This is particularly true in dice games, and Star Wars: Destiny consequently offers many options to manipulate both your own and your opponent’s’ dice. However, there is one key moment in the game in which dice alone may contribute to your fate – the roll off to determine who selects the battlefield at the beginning of the game. However, despite your inability to modify your roll off results, you do affect your odds when you select the characters that you bring to the table.
But first, let’s consider why the winner of the roll off matters in the first place. In addition to determining who is the first player (and consequently who gains two shields), the winner of the roll off gets to importantly choose the battlefield. In some games, this choice may be an important part of your strategy. For example, if I am playing a 4 [infopopup tag=aw002] team and my opponent is playing [infopopup tag=aw045] and [infopopup tag=aw029], I would much rather we use the [infopopup tag=aw169] battlefield that I brought instead of the [infopopup tag=aw174] battlefield that my opponent brought. Conversely, if I brought [infopopup tag=aw037], I may want to select my opponent’s battlefield in many cases so that I can start stacking shields on Qui-Gon before the first round even begins. In either situation, I would rather win the roll off because my opponent is likely to make the opposite choice. On the other hand, in some games, the selection of the battlefield may not be important because each player brought the same battlefield or the battlefields do not give an obvious advantage to either deck more than the other. In these cases, the ability to make the decision about being the first player or gaining shields based on your starting hand is important. If I have a [infopopup tag=aw016] in hand to play on [infopopup tag=aw021], I probably want to go first so that I can set myself up for Jango’s free activation (with the Holocron die) earlier in the round. However, if I have [infopopup tag=aw075] in hand, I will probably elect to go second and gain two shields so that I can critically remove dice from my opponent’s pool early in the game without actually dealing significant damage to my red character. I guess really though, this is all just a long-winded way of saying, “you would rather win the roll off than lose it.” So how exactly do we do that?
In Star Wars: Destiny, each player rolls all of their character dice at the beginning of the game and the player with the highest total numerical value showing gets to select the battlefield for the game. If indeed we accept the premise that this decision is important, then it merits discussing how important it is to attempt to optimize our chances of winning. For example, let’s consider the numerical faces on the dice of two different teams:
[infopopup tag=aw001] (Elite) – Blank, 1 Focus, 1 Discard, 1 Resource, 1 Melee, 2 Melee
2x [infopopup tag=aw002] – Blank, Blank, 1 Resource, 1 melee, 2 melee, 2 melee*
The average roll on these dice will be 4.
4 x [infopopup tag=aw002] – Blank, Blank, 1 Resource, 1 melee, 2 melee, 2 melee*
The average roll on these dice will be 4.
“So what’s the big deal,” you ask? Don’t both of these teams give you the same average result? Well, the short answer is yes. But the longer answer includes an analysis of the sum of the variances for each roll. Each Stormtrooper die has a relatively high variance (0.67). So while they theoretically roll an average of 1 (the same as a Phasma die), there is a higher probability of rolling lower (a 0) and an equally high probability of rolling higher (a 2). The Phasma die, conversely, has a smaller variance (0.33). When the sum of the variances is considered, the 4x Stormtrooper team has a total variance of 2.67, while the Phasma and 2x Stormtrooper team has a total variance of only 2. Despite the same average result, the Phasma team is going to more consistently roll results around the average of 4, while the 4x Trooper team is going to be less consistent. Other interesting examples include pairing [infopopup tag=aw038] (Elite) with [infopopup tag=aw029]. This team has an atypically high maximum result of 10 and a better than normal average roll of 4.33. However, the variance that comes with this combo is very high (2.94). This starts to be further worthy of consideration when you put together teams with fewer than four dice. Pairing [infopopup tag=aw035] (Elite) with [infopopup tag=aw038], for example, returns a disappointing average result of just 3.33 (albeit with a much lower than normal variance – 1.56).
So what does this all mean to you? Do you think this will have any impact on how you construct your teams? For me, I tend to doubt that it will; however, seeing the significant disadvantage that I would be at in the roll off with a Luke/Rey team does give me pause. It is always advantageous to make that first decision, and it seems like a bad idea to make no effort to consider that. But of course, who knows what the future of Star Wars: Destiny will bring? Perhaps a future Event is in the works that says “You may play this card immediately after drawing your hand at the beginning of the game. You choose the battlefield for this game and skip the dice rolling phase of setup. If your opponent plays a copy of this card, discard both without resolving their effect.” Perhaps they’ll even call it “I Make My Own Luck.”
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Nice one Matthew. I have thought about these issues, but never bothered to do the math beyond the mean. Of course variance isa factor at this.
However, given your examples, there would still be no difference between who goes first more often, right? Phasma plus 2 ST would roll 4 more consistently, but the higher variance of the 4 ST would mean a higher total as often as a lower and on average both teams win the roll equally often.
Hey Sven, you’re absolutely right. Consequently, in the case of the Phasma/Trooper vs 4 Troopers teams, there really isn’t any difference in the odds. However, I think this will be more interesting when we start to consider the outside cases where the average is higher or lower than the norm. I have found, so far, that they range from an average roll of 3.33 to 4.33, with most combinations rolling an average of 4. There definitely should be a difference though between the team that averages 4.33 and the team that averages 3.33 I would think.